1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a design support system which is executed by a computer, namely a CAD system, and more particularly to an improvement in data management.
2. Related Arts
CAD (computer-aided design) generally performs modeling of figures by combining basic figure elements called primitive, or by performing predetermined processing of the primitives as they are or a combination thereof. Specifically, when one edge of a cube is rounded to have a curved shape, a rounding process of that edge is performed with respect to a cube primitive to create a figure. The same figure may be created by another creating process such as extrusion processing (parallel translating body creation) of one quarter of a circle, for example.
As a conventional CAD system, there is known so-called “parametric CAD” which records a drawing procedure such as creation, arrangement, processing, etc. of a primitive as historical data and also relates data of a plurality of figure elements created by the historical data to record and manage as a design file. In the following description, data of figures as a whole having a plurality of figure element data combined is called “figure data”.
According to the conventional CAD system, a plurality of figure elements are recorded as separate files, and a design file of each element is related to a base file (standard design file). When designing, the related design file of each element is referenced from the standard design file to divide designers to the respective elements, so that the design management can be facilitated. Thus, the figure data contains a plurality of figure element data.
There is used a system where an ID number is determined for historical data which is referenced in each design file and the figure element data created therefrom, and it is used as a key to retrieve and specify the historical data or the figure element data.
However, according to the aforesaid conventional CAD system, the ID number is sometimes changed or deleted when a design file is converted so to conform to another type of CAD system or optimization processing is performed in order to reduce a load when a design file is stored. Therefore, reference to the historical data or the figure element data is disabled, and it becomes necessary to create a setting for reference again, and when the figure data is comprised of many figure element data, design efficiency lowers, and benefits and convenience are low.